Clarification About “The Beast”
When I first heard about the movie “The Beast,” I was intrigued. I went to The Beast’s official site to check out the word there. From what I read, it seems that this movie is claiming to have secrets that prove that Jesus Christ never existed! Yikes, that’s quite a breakthrough! Well, I checked out the forums, and to my suprise, it seems to be a highly interesting place. I wanted to find out more about this Beast movie, so I made a post with my questions and concerns:
When I first heard about this movie, my impression was that it was made with the intention of disproving the idea that Jesus Christ ever existed. I read that the director had done some personal research, and intends to let the world know about these revolutionary secrets that he has found. That got me interested. My first thought was “wow, I hope he’s ready for some heavy scrutiny by thousands of scholars around the world…” My next thought was “I hope this isn’t going to turn out to be a Michael Moore-type disaster…” i.e. - A great movie that has a lot of great things to say, but fell short just enough to earn horrible PR and distrust. Another thing that crossed my mind, and I’m sure it has crossed many others as well, is why on Earth would no scholar or skeptic have found these secrets before?
Now I’m having pre-release disappointment. Okay, let’s say I actually have some secret that proves that Jesus never existed. Wow! This is groundbreaking! Hmm, forget about scientific and religious journals and making money through publishing some of this research I have done. I think I’ll share this world-changing news through a Hollywood feature film! Yeah, that’s the way to do it. That’s how I envisioned finding out about it…
Yeah, so as far as breaking any ground, this movie will probably be a big disappointment to a hardcore skeptic. I’m sure a lot of 12-year olds will lap it up, though. It’s in a movie, and it talks about something that goes against what their parents teach them, so it must be gospel!
At first I was intrigued about the cast and crew being legally sworn to secrecy, now I’m sure it must be nothing more than a ploy to build hype.
So, my take is, once everyone who is going to see it sees it… We’ll be right where we left off. No solid proof one way or the other. Well, I mean, let’s face it, there might be a reasonable amount of evidence that Jesus actually existed, but I’m not sure it really matters whether one believes it or not. After all, what we don’t have is hardcore, tangible evidence that God exists. Or that It doesn’t. However… If it were possible to provide reasonable proof that Jesus never existed, now that would be something. That would change the world in a big way.
So am I missing the boat completely here? Is this movie not even trying to accomplish what is advertised? I just noticed on the homepage that the words “fictional thriller” are now being used to describe it. When I first did some research on it, everything I read indicated that the movie is trying to present some sort of research-based “proof” through a fictional storyline… What’s the deal?
-Daniel.
I got a reply. Mind you, it’s not a reply from the director or anything, but it seems logical enough for me. Here it is, a reply from “djbell”:
grooveNectar wrote:
So am I missing the boat completely here?Yeah. The Beast is a ficticious movie where a girl ficticiously finds out that the J man never existed.
The God Who Wasn’t There is an anti-fundamentalist documentary that acts as an introduction to the idea that Jesus didn’t exist. It’s obviously biased and not long enough discuss everything the apologists say, but I found it to be an fun introduction to the subject.
Honestly I think that all you have to do to learn that Jesus didn’t exist is to read the New Testament and compare with history of the early first millenium. It’s as easy to believe as if I told you that Moses parted the Atlantic last week. Which leads us to faith- that’s the only possibe reason anyone could believe in the historicity of Jesus.
It’s not a particularly fringe concept to not believe in Jesus. On the planet, there are 2 billion Christians, of which constitute an enormous percentage of Biblical scholars; but how many take the Bible literally anyway– half, or less? Then there are a billion Muslims who believe in a very different legend of Jesus. And then a billion non-religious or spiritual people, and the remaining two billion people religious people, obviously believe the Jesus story is not to be taken literally.
So, it’s not as it appears… Still looks like it might be entertaining, so I think it’s worth a watch. I’ll try to catch it in theaters. On a side note, I’d encourage anyone to check out those forums, there’s some really good stuff in there.